Supernova
by slightlyskewed
Summary: Extremely surreal and uncanonical short Fëanor fic. I had some reservations about posting this, as it isn't my normal style...but I hope someone likes it anyway, for all its oddness. I appreciate criticism, but only on the story, not the views expressed.
1. Default Chapter

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Supernova- A rare celestial phenomenon involving the explosion of most of the material in a star, resulting in an extremely bright, short-lived object that emits vast amounts of energy.

"Maitimo!"

But Curufin is not really calling for Maitimo. He is calling for Eru, and for the Valar, who have forsaken them and who care not how much blood is spilled today.

"Maitimo!"

He reaches, grabs a slender white forearm half covered in rich grey velvet. His older brother is steady and maddeningly calm, a sort of bovine indifference that drives Curufin into an even higher wheeze of panic. 

"It's Father. Oh, Maitimo, come _quickly!"_

Quickly-quickly. Curufin is hardly aware of the rush and flutter of his brother's cloak or the steady, gentle voice asking him questions. He is not aware of answering them at all. Curufin's flighty schemer's heart is elsewhere, below the deck and amidst the mighty rolling sides of the ship.

Curufin is unaware that he is holding his brother's hand tightly in his own, a childgrip death would barely be able to part. Had he known it he would have denied it.

Fëanor lies, bleeding, on his bed.

Fëanor the mighty, Minyon First-begotten, Fëanor of the clever hands and lying eyes and breathless truthful voice. Half his face is in shadow, the lamp casts only a thin bubble of light, and the other half of his face and his black-black hair stream out into nebulous darkness. Curufin clings to Maitimo, whose paleness is reassuring and whose stance is solid. 

"What happened to him," Maitimo asks, but he is already taking in the blood streaming from the corners of his mouth and the slack gaze of one grey eye. 

"I don't know. We found him like this when we woke."

"We?"

"Me and Tyelkormo. We found him and he was lying on his back."

Maitimo feels his father's pulse. It loops into the darkness as steady as his hair and the galaxy swirl of his deep grey cloak. Perhaps thinking of this he reaches and loosens the clasp only to find it has already been loosened. 

"I don't understand. His pulse is regular, and he's breathing."

The narrow chest of the man on the bed moves up and down with a regularity that is far from reassuring. It is mechanical, and Elves are not a mechanical people. Fëanor does not speak or move or show any sign that he notices his sons. 

. 

"I am no healer, Curufin."

"You're eldest. You're supposed to know."

"I do not."

"Maitimo—"

"It's all right," the older elf says awkwardly. Though he is nearly grown Curufin presses against him like a small child. Curufin and Fëanor are like to like, but without Fëanor Curufin looses much of his security. Maitimo pats his back with an unpracticed hand. "There doesn't seem to really be much wrong with him. Perhaps it's merely shock, or perhaps—"

Maitimo does not finish the thought, but turns his younger brother around. "Go find the others. Speak to Makalaurë. He will calm your fear better than I."

"I do not fear." Curufin's proud mouth trembles, and he obeys reluctantly, leaving his brother to sit in the room, more or less alone. 

The darkness is more than nebulous, it is alive. As Maitimo sits it begins to eat him, slowly, the threads and tendrils snaking invisible into his mind until it is impossible to shake off the gloom. This living darkness breathes softly in his ear of things Maitimo does not know, will never know, that his father understands too well: the darkness speaks of hate and betrayal and fury and cold iron lust. It speaks of things that are fragile and good and easily broken, and of evil as steel and stone. It bites and kisses and wheedles and whines and tells him that he is fragile too, such a pretty thing made of ivory and copper, so beautiful, so interesting, so false—

It is then, listening to his father's mechanical breathing in the dark, that Maitimo who will be Maedhros vows never to be broken. 

The darkness laughs its own silent laugh and envelops him in a cocoon of hate. Maitimo struggles forward and leans by the bed, wipes the blood from his father's lips with the corner of his cloak. The stain is like wine and he can hear drip-drip to the floor that the blood is now spreading equally from his cloak. He kisses his father's cold white cheek and takes his hand. Fëanor will not usually allow his eldest son so close to him. 

"Father, what's wrong with you?" He asks, but he is not really worried, has never been really worried like Curufin. Fëanor is a strange one and he sees the world in ways other people cannot. Perhaps there is a vision unfolding in the dark, and perhaps he is watching from afar the blooming of galaxies and the deep sonic pulse of the neutron stars. 

If he looks to the side he can almost imagine it. How beautiful it would be, to see these things as Varda told them—vast clouds of gas taking up the sky, the colored exhalations of giants. Stars like his father's gems and the moon, Tilion's shining vessel.

Without moving or changing the pace of his breathing, Fëanor begins to speak. 

"We are the Dispossessed. History does not hold for us, and our words and deeds shall be our own and no one else's. We will pay in blood, but this is not about the jewels or even about Finwë the beloved who is lost to us. We are Exiled and yet come into our own. We are the Dispossessed." 

Maitimo cradles his father's head in his hands. He does not weep, for it has always been his place to understand and to see, not to feel. Fëanor's voice is violins and cellos and the flute played down low where it sounds throaty and not like a flute at all. His breath rises and falls with the waves and, far away, the pounding of the Enemy's drums. 

"I do not know if I will remember this when I wake fully, or if I shall have the time to remember it. You would not believe what I have seen: mountains and rivers and forests that bear our mark, lands that remember our footfalls in this Middle-Earth. Let it never be said that I was a bringer of woe, for without sorrow there can be no joy, and without this suffering the Noldor would be neither so great nor so beautiful. We are strong because we resist and increase even as we diminish. I have done what was written and more besides."

And then, heartbreakingly: "I love you, Maitimo." 

"I love you also, Father."

The blood-streaked lips of the older elf curve upwards in a smile. "Go. I shall join you shortly."

From the deck of the ship the smoke-grey sea extends in all directions like a frothy cream. Makalaurë stands with Curufin on the bow, and the two of them peer together into the upcoming fog. Perhaps they hope to see the land their father has told them of. Maitimo joins them.

Did you fix him?" Curufin asks bluntly. Maitimo shakes his head.

"He never needed fixing." 

Makalaurë, who is a singer and who understands that some things merely _are, _nods and smiles. Curufin does not look as if he understands. The delicate embroidery on his left sleeve is coming unraveled, and Maitimo watches as the sun picks out threads of gold shivering down his arm.

"He was bleeding so much."

"I think that may have been your imagination." 

"You saw it too."

"I'm not sure." And looking back, he truly is not—that blood, was it just a trick of the darkness? It is possible, it could have happened, anything and everything is possible and could have happened. The sun is rising in the East, and it looks oddly watery coming up from the clouds for air.

"I should like to see the sun up close one day," Makalaurë says quietly, "and the hill from which is springs."

"You would have to travel far."

"I know." 

Curufin looks from one still face to the other and walks away. He is probably looking for Tyelkormo, for the same reasons as usual—the elder brothers are too slow, too stupid, too uncaring. Father needs help, not drivel about the sun.

"I think," Makalaurë says after a moment, "I think that would not be so bad. I like this traveling. And I like being able to breathe the air and know the Valar did not make me to breathe it." 

"We are the Dispossessed," Maitimo says, not darkly but plainly.

"How can we be? We never cared for that which we had in the first place." 

The door to Fëanor's cabin springs open and Fëanor, crackling and blazing in his swirling cloak of grey, strides onto the deck and goes to the rail. With his face silhouetted by the rising sun and lit by its reflection in the sea, he is both beautiful and terrible, totally alien, transformed from an elf into a shining chalice of knowledge and hope. Every line and shape of him is clearer than it has ever been, and as the world stops he leaps and spreads gossamer wings to the sky. 


	2. Really Really Short Notes

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Notes

I used the mother-names of all the sons of Fëanor...with the exception of Curufin, who used his father-name, and who I probably should have called Kurufinwë. Still not entirely sure why I did that _. My apologies. 

The definition at the beginning of the story is from the American Heritage Dictionary. Don't know if I need to say this, but, lol, I did not make the definition up. 


End file.
